JACK NEO CHEE KEONG is rarely lost for words. As Singapore's best-known comedian and filmmaker, the 46-year-old is famed for being a subversive motor mouth, filling first his television shows and then his films with torrents of acerbic social satire - this is, after all, a man whose artistic standing stemmed from his roles as a feisty old woman and a pesky, middle-aged housewife in one of the city state's longest-running television comedies. But the word that has Neo stuttering is 'government' - or, to be exact, the one in his native Singapore. Having made I Not Stupid, a film explicitly criticising the country's elitist social-engineering programmes - with schoolchildren being streamed into ranks on their academic performances - Neo is hardly likely to worry about making damning statements about how Singapore is run. Worried he was when he was asked whether the Singaporean authorities are showing little appreciation for the punishing work ethic of the common people - a theme that runs through I Not Stupid Too, the sequel to the film that propelled him (and Singaporean cinema) to region-wide recognition. 'In Singapore ... ' he trails off. He starts again. 'I think our government is now ... ' Pause. 'I think now they appreciate people more when people try to do something - before, they never encouraged you,' he says, finally. 'I was invited to a prime minister's talking session and I was one of the members, and we were allowed to ask questions and he mentioned that too.' His popularity with those in power possibly explains his hesitancy in speaking candidly. When he unleashed I Not Stupid, film critics and political commentators were astonished by how Neo tears apart a system that was the making of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father and Minister Mentor to his son, the current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. While the satire is mild when compared to its foreign counterparts and financed by Raintree Pictures, a filmmaking arm of the country's official broadcasters MediaCorps, the film was still hailed as a risky step into the political unknown. Four years on and Neo's social standing has altered dramatically. While he could never be considered an outspoken dissident - a label that usually carries with it imprisonment and exclusion from public life, as experienced by opposition politician Chia Thye Poh or the late dramatist Kuo Pao Kun - the filmmaker has danced with danger with the barbed social commentary in I Not Stupid. After more than a decade in television, he made Money Not Enough in 1998, a film that hits out at the rat race and the cynicism it breeds as the city state embraces turbo-capitalism. Not so today, however: Neo is now the proud owner of the Cultural Medallion - one of Singapore's most esteemed honours - and a one-man institution in the Lion City's film industry. With the fanfare that greets I Not Stupid Too when it opened in Singapore earlier this year, Neo is easily a cultural ambassador that the government holds dear to its heart. Keenly aware of how much this cuddly relationship with the administration may undermine his standing as a leading satirist, Neo is eager to dismiss how he now has access to those in power. 'Not that [the prime minister] listens to me - but I put some of the problems into my film,' he says. He denies he's now part of the establishment. 'I have my own philosophy, my own thinking, I will never stop pinpointing my problems and I will put it in a movie,' he says. 'Obviously they know me, and not every time I would poke fun at them - it depends on the story. My movies pinpoint their problems and usually gain a lot of support. [The officials] believe my observations and it's more than good enough.' Neo still has qualms about changes being 'slow', but it has been 'progressive', he says. 'At least I think society is more open and more people dare to speak up - I think it's more important,' says Neo, who has just completed a movie about office politics titled Just Follow Law, a pun that jibes at the inflexible bureaucrats and also lor, the Singlish adverb that signifies a resignation to fate. 'There is one thing that's good about our government, although sometimes people don't like that. Usually for a while they know they have made a mistake - they will not admit it, but they will quietly change it. 'Times change and we have to compete with the world. I think a lot of times [officials] are closing one eye - and once they do that, they see things that could pull up the whole nation.' He cites the streaming system he touched on in I Not Stupid as an example. 'I don't know whether they changed that because of the film - but obviously they changed. The system where you divide classes into best and worst students as EM1, EM2 and EM3 was dissolved. You don't see that anymore. Some people say it's because of the movie, but I say no: it isn't only my effort, I just played my part. A lot of people just pushed together and this system was dissolved quietly. I think it's better - for people so young, if you label them as stupid, it's difficult for them.' The outspoken critic against officially endorsed elitism has surely put his work where his mouth is in I Not Stupid Too when he hired delinquents for bit parts. 'For one shoot we needed a group of gangsters and they found me not real ones but mock-ups,' he says. 'They've got the looks but their acting is very straight. So the producers found me some real gangsters - but my problem now is: how am I going to communicate with them? They couldn't really talk to me properly and when they talk it's as if they want to fight. 'So during the shoot I'd just give them simple directions and I told myself that whatever they do I must say good. Actually they did well - and you can see something striking in their eyes, because for the past 10 or 20 years they haven't done anything that people said was good. I can even beat them at the end - can you imagine that?' Neo compares this episode with what he was trying to convey in I Not Stupid Too - that communication between parents and children is crucial to how people across generations can build up a solid bond between each other. 'Maybe it's a very typical Chinese family situation - whatever their children do, if they do it right, okay, they take it for granted. But if they do it wrong, they will keep scolding and caning them,' he says. 'If you want to communicate with your child, if you don't find the right key you can't open the door. I think appreciation is the key.' I Not Stupid Too revolves around three boys whose lives are made miserable by severe and unsympathetic parents. Nine-year-old Jerry (Ashley Leong) is frustrated by his indifferent, middle-class parents (played by Neo and Xiang Yun, reprising their roles as a couple in I Not Stupid), who spend most of the time bickering, and finds it difficult to get them to show the merest appreciation of him by turning up at his school performance. Meanwhile, his brother Tom (Shawn Lee, who also appeared in I Not Stupid) finds solace among the more unsavoury elements in school, as does the perennially faulted street-hawker's son Cheng Cai (Joshua Ang, another Stupid alumnus). 'When I was a kid I never heard my father and my brother telling me I'm good. But now I understand, as I got older, that they did not know how to appreciate what I did,' says Neo. 'I can see a lot of parents doing the same thing - when their children make mistakes they'll use this finger [a wagging finger] but they will never use this [raised thumbs]. 'When the film was shown in Singapore all races came to watch and they cried - because they just realised they have never done this, for so long they have never praised their sons. A lot of the people were worried that they would become datou [big-headed] or very proud - but I think actually no. To praise them is just the key - and once you get to that they will listen to you. Then you can scold, shout and hit [them], no problem.' Whether this works between parents and children remains to be seen - but somehow it has for the Singaporean officials in their dealings with one who was once the film industry's enfant terrible. I Not Stupid Too opens on Thursday
